On January 10, 1910, Waldo Waterman and his partner Kenneth Kendall arrived at Dominguez Hill,
the site of the first air meet in the United States. They had planned to enter the meet, but the engine of their plane had exploded. They
soon spotted Glenn Curtiss and asked if they could join his group. He accepted their offer to work without pay and took them over to
Henry Kleckler, his chief mechanic, who turned them over to a chap assembling a pusher-biplane for Frank Johnson, one of Curtiss' first
aeroplane buyers. Johnson would become the first native Californian to own and fly an aeroplane on February 12, 1910.